Preparing for my second Re;view meeting with Caroline Hick tomorrow. Going to use the session to concentrate on talking about the family photography project and it’s potential for a collaborative research project, combining and sharing ordinary and expert forms of knowledge.
In readiness for this and for the ACE application, trying to capture and pin down my ideas – doing it in physical form makes it more manageable and interesting. Then I can see it all instead of looking at jumbles of text on various computer documents, which can be dispiriting.
Some of the stuff that’s been feeding my brain over the past few days:
A treat, received through the post yesterday from artist Lyndsey Perth ‘A sense of Someplace’ – ‘publication of photomontages created during artist and photographer Lindsay Perth’s residency with NHS Forth Valley from 2011 until 2013. These montages are the results of a collaboration between the artist and clients of Clackmannanshire Community Healthcare Centre’s Mental Health Resource in Sauchie and members of mental health support organisation Reach Out With Arts in Mind, in Alloa.’
I showed Lyndsey’s work in 2010 at PS. I Love You, an arts programme I curated at Bradford Playhouse, and through following her on Twitter found out about A Sense Of Someplace publication. I suggested a swap: I sent her some of my zines and got this in return. I’m deeply impressed by the cinematic beauty of the images, which are found slides, selected and put together physically by Lyndsey and the group. Also the accompanying text, fragments from fictional sources meaningful to contributors, adds an intriguing and often ambiguous poetic layer to the narrative. The accompanying essays by Lyndsey herself, Malcom Dickson from Street LevelPhotoworks , contributors Susannah and Mary, and Art Psychotherapist Alison Brough, discuss the processes and the potential meanings in an accessable, and direct way, giving an insight into the progress and journey of the project.
A wonderful project – have a look at the website, and be wowed.
http://www.lippi.org/a-sense-of-someplace/
I’m interested in Lyndsey’s practice in working with found images and narrative – I think there’s a lot of common ground in our practices, indidividual and collaborative – we’ve agreed it would be good to keep in touch She is based in Edinburgh – hopefully next time I’m up visiting family in Glasgow we can meet up.
Also looking at:
1. This project by artist Emma Smith http://www.emma-smith.com/www.emma-smith.com/Arnolfini.html.
I heard about Emma’s work through talking to fellow Re:view recipient Amelia Crouch this week when we met up with along with a few other artists in Bradford. Emma is one of the artists Amelia is talking to about her practice as part of her bursary. I am interested in Emma’s situating of her practice as research, as this something I am currently thinking about.
2. ‘Photography Changes Everything’ – a book suggested by Lyndsey on Twitter about the different uses and meanings of photography, ‘how it shapes and changes every aspect of our experience of and in the world’, written as an ‘interdisciplinary dialogue’ between artists, writers, inventors, public figures and everyday folk. I treated myself as I just got paid. Enjoying thewide range of voices and perspectives, and particularly the inclusion of ‘ordinary’ forms of knowledge and experience. Here’s the online version http://click.si.edu/
This contribution, which is a story of one man’s reading of a family photograph taken when he was a child, is particularly interesting –
http://click.si.edu/VisitorStory.aspx?story=385
what do we make our family photographs mean? How do they support our narratives of ourselves?
3. ‘The Last Picture Show’ by Marjolaine Ryley: an ‘artist initiated research project… looking at photographic family archives and the way these are changing with the possibilities offered by a variety of new media technologies, examining the inevitable shifts that this has created’
http://www.thelastpictureshow.org/Home/homept2.htm
I’m interested in how her research grew out of her own practice and autobiography, and how she has navigated this transition
Here is more about Marjolaine’s practice http://www.marjolaineryley.co.uk/HTML/frameset-news.html
4. Val Williams: ‘Ghost Worlds: Photography and the Family’ article http://www.exitmedia.net/prueba/eng/articulo.php?id=158
